uprooted #1-13, 2023-2024

Archival pigment print, 16x16" (7 round) and 24x34" (6 rectangular)

After two decades of drought, California experienced a series of bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers in early 2023. This series of color photographs, captured at The Sea Ranch on the Sonoma coast where I live, pays homage to the more than 1,000 fallen trees and their exposed roots. Inspired by Goethe’s color theory and the concept that “light exists within darkness,” I employ the negative image as a conceptual strategy to reveal a world normally hidden from view. Similar to an X-ray, the inverted palette—with shifting blues shaped by light and shadow on soil and roots—renders the unseen visible. These "reversed hues" and their altered spectrum raise philosophical questions about our perception of color and the world around us. Uprooted evokes an entropic state of being pulled from the ground, bridging macro and micro, darkness and light, above and below. The massive tree’s root foundation when exposed, reveals a glimpse into the psychic life of an otherwise unseen world, beckoning the viewer to reimagine the reality of climate change and the many events that shape our movements, and the changes in our own lives.